The child inside

 Part of me really thought I was going to wake up feeling like an adult.

Perhaps, as they say, age is just a number. But, as of a few weeks ago, my number is 50, and that feels significant, with “significant” being a euphemism for “old.”

Now, before some of you shake your heads at me and call me a youngster compared to your greater accumulation of years, remember this: you once turned 50, and I’ll wager it seemed a big number to you, too, at the time.

I could tell I was nearing over-the-hill status when my knee started hurting. Maybe it’s arthritis, but I’m going to go ahead and pretend it’s a sports injury, despite the fact that the most sporty thing I do is wearing sweatpants while eating my evening bowl of ice cream.

My husband, who brings in the mail, delights in making sure the increasingly frequent mailings touting the joys of retirement are on top of the pile on the kitchen table, and my kids make old-person jokes when I squint at small print and conk out five minutes into a Saturday night movie.

It only seems right that, if my body is determined to tell me I’m getting older, the rest of me ought to follow suit, don’t you think?

When I swam to consciousness the morning of my birthday, I shoved the mop of sleep-hair out of my face, remembered the date, and breathed in a little, hopeful gasp.

Maybe today would be the day.

If I’m 50 -- and I’m pretty sure I am -- that means I’ve spent the past 37 years walking around feeling like a 13-year-old.

For as long as I can remember, my Inner Me has been solidly centered at that awkward age, all knees and elbows and insecurities flying every-which-way.

My outer layers have grown older, with varying degrees of success, and I even manage to pass as a competent adult much of the time.

Inside, though, there’s a young girl who’s unsure of the world, afraid of herself, desperate to be seen and wanting to hide, longing to love and be loved, hopelessly ungainly and susceptible to emotional roller coasters that would make any amusement park proud.

On my 50th birthday, though...mightn’t that be the day when I finally, finally, felt like a grown-up?

Nope.

Turns out that big number holds no more magic than any other age, and the me of 50 is the same 13-year-old in disguise as the me of the past half a century.

If a milestone birthday doesn’t nudge a person out of childhood -- if even busily “adulting,” going to work and paying taxes and shopping for laundry detergent, doesn’t make you feel like an adult -- what, then, does it take to finally feel like a real, honest-to-goodness, properly grown-up human being?

Or … are adults actually all 13-year-olds, waiting to grow up?

I truly don’t know. Maybe the well-spoken, businessy, have-it-all-together people I see every day actually are as confident and competent as they seem.

Or, maybe we’re all a little bit of a mess inside, insecure and uncertain and hoping someone loves us.

Gotta be honest -- I kinda hope it’s not just me.

I wonder -- since I’m permitted, as an official old person, to wax philosophical -- if we mightn’t all be better off if we remembered we might be surrounded by 13-year-olds.

Under the veneer of adulthood, the people we see every day might be full of insecurities and vulnerabilities and yearnings and scars.

Maybe -- I can’t say for sure, but maybe -- everyone has a child inside, desperate to be loved.

Reaching to be understood, my insides wonder: Did Jesus have an inner 13-year-old?

Goodness, I don’t know. But I do know He had a special place in His heart for people who didn’t have it all together.

He hung out with the broken, the rejects, the ones who climbed up a tree because they felt small inside. He wept for the broken hearts around Him. His friends, those He pulled closest, were impulsive, weak, insecure, foolish -- in other words, a lot like me.

If 50 didn’t do the trick, I don’t have much hope I’m ever going to shake the awkwardness and uncertainty and yearnings of the won’t-grow-up young person inside me.

Perhaps it's time to make peace with her.

To accept her as part of me, and to ask her help in seeing with compassion the fears and insecurities in the people around me.

To take her by the shoulders and tell her she is deeply, endlessly, unconditionally loved -- messed-up little thing that she is -- by a man and a God who did everything to make her His.